Richard Johnson

Richard Johnson

Celebrity News

Fashion photographer turns pornographer

Fashion photographer Sante D’Orazio has a huge collection of nudes of beautiful women — think Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss and Stephanie Seymour — but he can never show them.

Sante D’OrazioBen Gabbe/Getty Images for The Lexington New York City

“Someone would sue me, or I’d get whacked,” D’Orazio told me. “So I scratched out their faces, and it’s actually better, because when you scratch out the faces, it becomes more abstract.”

That habit has now inspired him to create an arty porno, as D’Orazio, who studied painting before becoming a photographer, also scratched out the faces and private parts in an archive of black-and-white 1970s porn he found.

“It took me about five months to do 10 minutes,” D’Orazio said. “It’s 24 frames per second.”

The result is “moving abstraction,” he said. “It’s like Franz Kline does porn psychedelically.”

D’Orazio is now looking for a gallery to exhibit his work, but some dealers are snobs. “I have the stigma of being a fashion photographer,” he said.